The Postmortal drops a week from today, and to celebrate the release, next week's edition of the Deadspin Funbag will be a LIVE FUNBAG. We'll throw the post up around noon, then you can send in questions for the next three hours (via email or the comments) and I'll answer them in real time. All you have to do is occasionally refresh the page. No digging through the comments like a bad live chat. I swear. It'll be fun. LEGIT 40% CHANCE OF MIRTH.

The first reading and Q&A for the book will be in DC on Wednesday, August 31st. You can find details here. I'll read from the book, plus maybe an old Deadspin or KSK post just for shits and giggles (requests more than welcome). I'll have details on some of the other readings later in September, plus more on the novel next week. Now, back to your regularly scheduled dose of white male bathroom angst.

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Pepito:

My buddy thinks it's disgusting to fart when someone is standing at the urinal peeing, but I think there's no problem. It's the same as farting behind the stall. We all gotta breathe the fart-air he's produced, so what the hell, let it rip at the urinal, I say.

I agree. It's almost more honest to fart at the urinal. You're not hiding behind a stall partition like a coward. You're not anonymous. You put your name and face to that fart. You took ownership of that fart. I find it far more noble. Also, if you're like me, you have little choice but to fart while pissing. I mean, my asshole barely stops for oxygen when pissing. It's just one long tear after another. It's like someone let the air out of a moon bounce. Especially if I piss in the middle of the night. It's repugnant. I say all's fair. And the guy next to you is NOT allowed to comment on it.

Tim K.:

I was supposed to start my vacation today but missed my flight because I left my cell phone in my car. Of course there were no other flights so I had to cough up the cash and pay for new tickets. Is it wrong that I secretly hoped the first plane had crashed so I would feel better about my mistake? It would be much easier to accept the rebooking fees knowing the God purposely made me forget my phone to spare my life because I had some special purpose on Earth.

Referee Mills Lane says he'll allow it. There are few things worse than making an easily avoidable financial error, such as a rebooking fee for a flight. Because you know you can never get that money back, and that you didn't spend it on anything cool like weed or more weed.

The first time I ever had to call a plumber, I did no research. I called some random plumbing company who came over to snake my sink and the pieces of shit charged me $800 for the job. Eight hundred goddamn dollars to shove a fucking tube down the drain. And it was all my fault. All I had to do was call around and get a quotes from a handful of plumbers and I wouldn't have gotten fucked in the ass. So I've spent the past five years wishing nothing but hateful shit upon that company, hoping their fucking building burns down and that everyone there dies of being raped by wolves. I also daydreamed about picketing outside their building (I'm far too lazy to ever do it in real life), and calling with them vague threats about "going public" with "everything I know." I basically pictured myself as a plumbing whistleblower, the bravest man in all of toilet fixing. Instead I called around and found a better plumber next time. Losing money can cause you to lose your goddamn mind.

Ched:

I have a long standing theory that allowing your significant other to witness you eating chicken wings is a huge step in a relationship, because it has to be the worst of all meals in exaggerating how ugly, dirty and uncoordinated you can possibly be: sauce and glaze all over your face and in your fingernails, gnawing like a fucking caveman at a miniscule strand of meat, that simultaneous bearing-your-mandibles-while-sticking-your-tongue-through-bones to slurp up some tendon or something; I've actually changed my suggestion of restaurant or order because of the implications, and at least once I'm convinced I lost an early stages relationship because of it. My question is, there's got to be other milestones that aren't as obvious as first sex or first "I love you" or first non-awkward fart or first vacation together that single gents like myself might not be aware of. Any you'd care to warn us about?

Probably the first time you spend back-to-back nights sleeping at each other's places. I always thought that was a big deal. I know many, many people out there (mostly guys) who make it a priority to NEVER spend back-to-back days with someone they're going out with, so that they can maintain a healthy distance and keep some measure of independence (also so they can fuck other people). Usually, that buffer is at least one day, so you see a girl every other day at the maximum. But that buffer always ends up being compromised (usually by, as mentioned above, a vacation away together or something like that). Once the other person knows you can spend two days together, they tend to jump to the conclusion that you can spend EVERY day together. I'm not just talking about women when I say this. Men can get that impression as well, especially younger men trying to secure their first girlfriend.

The first time I thought I had a "girlfriend" was when I spent two consecutive days with this one girl when I was nineteen. The first day together, we hung out. The second day, we hooked up (first time I ever hooked up with someone). And when that happened, I was like, "Holy shit! GOT MYSELF A BRAND NEW GIRLFRIEND!" I told EVERYONE she was my girlfriend, even my parents. I told people at my shitty waitering job. I would have put it in skywriting if I could have. Securing that first girlfriend when you're a retarded teenager is pretty much the most important thing in the world.

Only this girl wasn't aware that she was my girlfriend. So when I called her the next night for more lovin' and she didn't pick up the phone, I DROVE to her house and knocked on her door. She wasn't there. So I did the exact same thing the night after. Even my parents were on to how pathetic it was.

MOM: Did you call your girlfriend?

ME: She wasn't there. I think I'll just swing by her house.

MOM: But if she didn't pick up the phone, then that means she either...

ME: Gotta go! GOT MYSELF A BRAND NEW GIRLFRIEND!

Also high on that list of big relationship milestones is the whole "meet my friends" business, when your new girlfriend parades you out for all her friends at a bar so that they know she found herself a big strong guy with a nice job and a big ol' peepee. And it's hard not to WANT to subject yourself to that little debutante party, as lame as you might find her friends to be. Because the friends will always lie to your friend and tell her "what a catch" you are, then you imagine them all being crazy jealous and murdering your new girlfriend so they can have you for themselves. It's a pretty fun scenario.

Lewbone:

How many times in your life do you think you've talked with someone who has, at one point in their life, been in a porn? This includes amateur porn of any sort but excludes "Girls Gone Wild". My guess is somewhere between 5-10. In my 5 years of college I'm guessing at least 4 or 5 girls that I talked to in class or at a bar did some amateur video. Since then, I'm pretty sure at least 1 or 2 bartenders in my area have been paid to have sex on camera.

It depends on what you mean by amateur video. If you mean anyone who had sex on camera with a partner (but not necessarily for money), then the number is probably far higher than five and ten. Plenty of people make home movies of themselves doing it, so there's no reason why your Uncle Bubby couldn't be spending his nights making tit-tickling vids with his new girlfriend, especially given how much easier it is now to shoot movies than it was just a few years ago. You talk to a lot of people in this lifetime. Even bus drivers. You said "thank you" to the bus driver the other day when you put your card in. How do you know he didn't go home and take out his phone camera and re-enact the limo scene in No Way Out with his hobo bride?

But if you're talking about people who were paid actual money to participate in the filming of a sex video, no matter how crudely done, then the number is obviously much lower. And if you narrow it down to people you actively know - friends, co-workers, teachers, etc. - it may be close to zero. Which is just such a letdown.

Scott:

I consider myself a pretty open-minded person, especially when it comes to food. I would love to be one of those people that can try any food and find something to appreciate about it, even if they don't exactly enjoy it.

But seriously, what the fuck would possess someone in their right mind to eat this:

That isn't just unappetizing - it's literally horrifying to me. I know there's a perfectly valid scientific reason for a dead squid reanimating (something to do with sodium ions making the muscles contract), but what possible explanation could there be for someone wanting to put that in their mouth? If someone offered me a choice between a medium rare sirloin of human flesh, and shoving THAT THING in my mouth mid-gooey spasm ... I would have an extremely difficult decision to make.

The video didn't show what happens during the actual eating portion of that meal though. Does the squid stop squirming? Or do you cut into it and then eat all the little wriggly parts? I assume this vid is from Japan, so I don't know what the etiquette would be.

Frankly, I'd have a hard time putting anything in my mouth that was still moving, because having live animals and parasites inside my body is a recurring nightmare of mine. Worms. Spider eggs. Larvae. I don't want any still-moving creature inside any of my cavities. That's horror movie shit, and I say that as someone with an open mind about food. For example, I had a friend who went to Japan and went to a fish market and the fish guy nailed the fish to a board, cut a piece of filet off the live fish, and had her eat the fish while the fish was watching her do it. Basically a fish's worst nightmare. But the filet doesn't move when you eat it, so I'd be 100% okay with that. WATCH ME EAT YOU, FISH. I'D EAT YOU SO HARD. But if the filet was wriggling around? No. OUT OF THE QUESTION.

Time for HALFTIME, and the special video intermission for today is an actual book trailer for The Postmortal. Yes, books have trailers now! It's the new hip thing. Please note that no sheep were harmed in the making of this trailer, except for one ewe that was really asking for it.

Jake:

A co-worker at my last job had a pretty awful and terrifying nightmare... His dream involved him being chased by spies or terrorists or something that were trying to kill him. A very vivid dream, vivid enough that the guy (while sleeping) burst through his second story window and through a wooden lattice, the type that people use to grow vines up the side of their house, and fell down to the lawn below. HE STILL DIDN'T WAKE UP and was crouching around and hiding behind some bushes for a while longer. The second he wakes up, he finds himself outside and his back is in enormous pain. He has to get a roommate to drive him to the hospital because he can barely walk. Now the poor guy's back is all fucked up just from some crazy ass dream. He did get a few months on medical disability and didn't have to work, but that's small potatoes compared to a fucked up back (I'm sure you can attest to that).

Jeeeesus. I never want to go to sleep again.

I went to summer camp when I was a kid and the camp didn't allow any campers who had a history of sleepwalking because, one year, there was a kid who started sleepwalking and walked outside his cabin and right down into a fucking lake. Imagine waking up in a lake. I'd spaz out like a methhead if that happened.

Ryan:

Let's assume for a second that it is not taboo(or illegal) to be a cannibal. How tasty would human ribs be? Pork baby back ribs are the tits, and braised beef short ribs are to die for. So human ribs, prepared the right way have to be amazing right?

As we noted in a previous Funbag, artist Diego Rivera once dabbled in cannibalism. He wrote about it in his autobiography. And where do ribs rate on his palate?

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(We) pooled our money to purchase cadavers from the city morgue, choosing the bodies of person who had died of violence - who had been freshly killed and were not diseased or senile. We lived on this cannibal diet for two months, and everyone's health improved. During the time of our experiment, I discovered that I liked to eat the legs and breasts of women, for as in other animals, these parts are delicacies. I also savored young women's breaded ribs.

BAM! Human ribs. But they must be from a female and the female must be young. If you're goin' cannibal, you go hard or go home.

Steve:

Bachmann or Palin?

Palin. It's no contest. Bachmann is always shot from the torso upwards. What is she hiding? Besides her husband's gimp mask, I mean. I bet Palin brings guns into the bedroom. Really messed up shit. That's a saucy lady.

Cheese Mac:

Whenever I get a burrito, none of the shit is together. You have the Chicken part, the rice part and the guac/veggies part. Why not toss all the parts in a bowl (like a salad) and then put it in the tortilla? That way you have the an evenly distributed burrito and chicken/rice/guac/veggies/etc in every bite. Looking at you, Chipotle.

I concur. Nothing is more disappointing than getting a meat-free bite of your burrito. I've had Chipotle burritos that gives you multiple bites of just rice. Now, I like rice. I could eat a dump truck full of steamed rice. I want to bathe in sushi rice, I'm such a whore for it. But I want some chicken in that bite, man. Everything ought to be mixed together, especially the sour cream and guacamole. You get a bite full of sour cream, and you know that much of it could have been better served elsewhere throughout the burrito. That's science.

Scooter:

In drivers ed, the instructor always tells you to keep your hands at 10 and 2, and though that might be safe, it looks pretty lame. What is the proper driving pose to make you look like an absolute badass? There are some ravines by my house, and every time I drive through their windy, one-laned, fast-turn roads, I imagine I'm on a high-speed chase, evading police/the FBI/hired assassins/etc. In reality, I'm barely breaking 25 because these turns are every 10 feet or so. But still, I put my left hand on top of the wheel, arm fully extended, and right hand on the stick shift. Is there a more badass way to look while driving, without killing myself or anyone else?

I drive in the laziest manner possible, with my left hand in my lap gripping the bottom of the wheel in a very sloppy fashion. It's like I'm hardly driving at all (Automatic transmission, just to be extra useless). Only when I have to turn do I perk up and bring my arms above my belly to turn the wheel (I like to pretend it's one of those huge wooden ship wheels and I'm making my schooner come about. Never gets old). My wife will sometimes get annoyed with this driving style and grab my right hand and place it on the wheel so that I have two hands on it, and I always react to this by looking at her as if I've just been sexually violated. That's MY arm, missy. I'll deploy it when I see fit.

The only time I throw both hands up on the wheel when driving straight is if I pass by a cop. As if it will matter to the cop. Look at his hand placement! That man is driving responsibly!

I agree with Scooter that the optimal driving pose is one hand on the wheel with the other on the stick shift (or wrapped around a honey in the shotgun seat, AMIRITE?!). When driving alone, I often put my arm around the passenger seat headrest and pretend it's the head of a fetching young starlet.

Or, should you be driving an automatic transmission, the optimal pose is having your right hand on the wheel with your left arm resting along the open driver's side window (the perfect pose for picking up hookers. Why YES, I am looking to party!). If you're playing loud music and taking on a tight turn on a mountain road, you really feel like you're in the middle of running footage for a Jaguar ad. It's tremendous. Bonus points if you happen to be wearing leather gloves at the time. Driving gloves are for fucking douchebags, but god dammit does it feel good to wear leather gloves and give that steering wheel a firm death grip. Feels like I'm on my way to assassinate someone.

Sean P.:

Which professional sport, athletes-wise, has the most assholes? Not stupid assholes, but just straight up pricks?

I'm thinking baseball. You have a ton of redneck douchebags (why do they have all goatees?) and a bunch of machismo obsessed tards. Sure there are plenty of nice guys, but overall, I say baseball has the most assholes.

A question like this requires firsthand knowledge, so I consulted with an anonymous reporter who says:

Athletes? The universal sportswriter answer to this question is baseball players. I mean, EVERY sportswriter says it's baseball. The reason I was always given is because the highest proportion of baseballers have the least amount of college, so they're all essentially frozen in time as 17 year olds, surrounded by other 17 year olds.

There's also way more media access to baseball players than anyone else, so they probably hate the media more.

And hey, if anyone knows prickish behavior, it's sportswriters. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sport with a richer history in blatant assholishness than baseball. Ty Cobb was an asshole. Joe DiMaggio was an asshole. Ted Williams was an asshole. Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, Barry Bonds, Jeff Kent, Milton Bradley... it's like a fucking asshole factory.

I think the reason why (apart from the above explanation) is because there are so many little white coach's children in baseball. Coach's kids are fucking dicks, and some of those kids end up in the major leagues as entitled and surly dickheads. I also think that baseball is the rare sport that gives every player a turn in the limelight (either pitching or batting at the plate), unlike football (which has only one glamour position) and basketball and hockey (in which the ball and puck are constantly changing hands). So it appeals to the kind of kid who likes to get up and preen before a crowd. Like A-Rod. He's a cunt.

Chris:

Do you think that you could kick the world's most bad ass midget's ass? I'm talking little legs and stubby fingers. Arms so short they need a doodie stick to wipe their ass. Minnie Me circus type small. Somewhere in the world there has to be a few that are learned in martial arts. Some kind of specialist in Krav Maga raised on the hard streets and if put in a tournament of little people would be the undisputed king of physical battle. Do you think in one on one combat that you would be able to whip the midget kuma tai grand champion's ass?

At Verne Troyer's size? Yes. Verne Troyer is 2'8". That's totally different from fighting, say, Peter Dinklage, who stands 4'5" tall. If Dinklage were a black belt, he could kick my ass and yours. In fact, he could probably kick my ass now, as is. Shit, all he'd have to do is look at me with those steely eyes and I'd be done. That's one badass motherfucker.

But Troyer is so small that he has virtually no reach. You could kick him and stomp on him without him getting within striking distance of your body. And his hands would be too small to get a proper grip on your feet and legs to take you down. I have a hard time believing someone the size of a baby could defeat a full-grown man, regardless of training. But if there were anyone in the world who could lose a fight to a baby, it's me.

Anonymous:

A friend works for Football Night in America and says to me: "During the season I am 5 feet from Peter King at all times. He has like 8 cell phones. One for every division. They all died once." I think you and I both know that the 8 phones are for: coffee, citrusy beer, Red Sox/Fenway/fantasy baseball, nuggets from the New York Times, gun control, Brett Favre, traveling to Europe, and fun Hitler nuggets.

Can't he get one cell phone with two lines? Some phones now allow you to have SkypeIn, which means you can carry an extra line. Why would you have eight cell phones? You only have two ears. Where would you keep them all? Does Peter have a fanny pack dedicated exclusively to cell phones? Surely, we can find a way to make his mobile communications simpler. Loftier, even.

So I work at a law school, which is a very boring thing to do for a living, but the one plus side is that often times we get letters from insane people who have somehow convinced themselves that the law school can help them expose whatever government conspiracy they have gotten themselves entangled in.

The letters are usually just your standard schizophrenic rants. I was tortured by the CIA, the FBI planted a tracking device in my neck etc. The best part about them is the insane format that they are usually written in. Some are handwritten and barely legible with the words running in all directions on the page. Some of them are unpunctuated screeds typed out in Word with footnotes. I got one today that was typed on half sheets of paper with a typewriter.

Anyways, any time I get one of these letters it absolutely makes my week, because I instantly imagine that I am a world weary police detective who is staring at the ramblings of a murderous madman. I'm like Morgan Freeman when he finds the Se7en killer's notebooks, pensively deconstructing the thoughts of a serial killer.

I imagine that one day one of the people who sent one of these letters will go on a horrific killing spree that would put the BTK Killer to shame. The FBI will be at their wits end trying to find this guy until they discover that he sent me a letter six weeks before the killings started. Lucky for them, I've spent hours meticulously pouring over said letter and have used my superior intuition and detective instincts to discover his location.

Some FBI agent will walk into my office one day and say, "I'm Special Agent Rick Schroeder. I understand that you are in possession of a letter. We believe this letter may have been sent to you by the 4th Street Flayer."

"The 4th Street Flayer? Why yes, I think you mean this letter here. Now, would you like to know where to find him, detective?" I'll reply.